Maybe there is serious academic disagreement among academics or researchers or even registered dieticians, but that’s not a good cite for it.
Citing a non-dietician selling training on ‘permission to eat’ at $75 a pop seems like citing a christian faith healer as evidence Christianity is true.
Ellyn Satter’s website nominally supports “eating what you want as much as you want” but glosses the whole ”… as long as what you want isn’t actually what you want, but instead these other things that you could learn to eat as long as you’ve got rigorously enforced habits.” I should note that Ellyn Satter seems exclusively focused on children, and so a large part of her work seems to be about controlling what they have access to and shaping their desires. It is definitely not advocating limitless access to whatever you want, and is actually very strict about time-based and content-based access to foods.
I guess in the literal sense she advocates ‘eating whatever you like’, but the modified definition of ‘like’ that Ellyn Satter uses is not what I’d consider unrestrained.
Satter and TFN both have beliefs about what people want (after adjustment periods or habit formations periods designed to clear away disorded eating patterns etc.). That doesn’t mean that they don’t really hold the belief that people (adults) should eat whatever they want, as much as they want. If I tell a houseguest they can eat anything they want in the kitchen, I really mean that when I say it, even if I am later shocked to find them eating glass bowls or something and say “I didn’t mean anything in the kitchen.”
Perhaps I can clarify my objections exploding ‘want’ into want/like/approve.
To me it feels like Ellyn Satter takes ‘-want/-like/+approves’ food behaviors then transforms the ‘-like’ and ‘-want’ variables into ‘+like’ and ‘+want’. Comparatively, I feel like TFN takes ‘+want/+like/-approves’ food behaviors then transforms the ‘-approves’ variable into ‘+approves’.
Ellyn Satter’s stuff is all about behavior and desire modification, but everything I’ve read of TFN emphasizes approval more. In both cases you end up with ‘+want/+like/+approves’, which is a better result psychologically. But TFN just gets that, while Satter’s approach gets that and a better result physically as well. I think TFN would disagree of the original quote, while Satter would agree with caveats.
I’ve skimmed the linked site. It seems to describe a way to modify eating behavior resulting in people both eating healthily and being happy about it, rather than repressing their desires for food, obsessing over diets, and suffering psychologically.
I’m not an expert on the subject; I don’t know what different methods exist to achieve this kind of result and what is each method’s rate of success.
My original statement that “there is no disagreement” was wrong, I should have qualified it. Some people remain healthy all their lives while just eating whatever they like. Others may be able to achieve such a state through some behavioral modification technique. Still others may remain unhappy with healthy diets. For some there may not be a healthy diet at all: for instance people suffering from obesity, which may be associated with “bad” diet, but which in some cases no dietary changes can effectively fix.
The correct statement should be that the diets formed by just eating whatever we like are often harmful, and in some of these cases no healthy diet can be found that the person likes and can adhere to without any effort.
A follow-up question would be whether exercise screens off being obese, i.e. whether going from obese to thin tends to make you healthier even if you’re already exercising. My guess is yes.
My guess is no, especially if you figure in the risk of getting an eating disorder—as far as I can tell, dieting is a gateway behavior for getting eating disorders.The risk isn’t terribly high, but the health effects of eating disorders are very negative.
In any case, rather few people achieve a substantial stable weight loss, so it’s hard to tell.
Yes there is.
Maybe there is serious academic disagreement among academics or researchers or even registered dieticians, but that’s not a good cite for it.
Citing a non-dietician selling training on ‘permission to eat’ at $75 a pop seems like citing a christian faith healer as evidence Christianity is true.
There’s Ellyn Satter, who The Fat Nutritionist links to, if you prefer a cite from a person with many letters after her name. I’m not sure how TFN’s career is relevant to a free blog post she wrote. It doesn’t say “and if you don’t agree, consider buying a course of counseling with me”. I doubt TFN’s credentials are your true rejection. Anyway, the comment I replied to didn’t specify “academic”.
Ellyn Satter’s website nominally supports “eating what you want as much as you want” but glosses the whole ”… as long as what you want isn’t actually what you want, but instead these other things that you could learn to eat as long as you’ve got rigorously enforced habits.” I should note that Ellyn Satter seems exclusively focused on children, and so a large part of her work seems to be about controlling what they have access to and shaping their desires. It is definitely not advocating limitless access to whatever you want, and is actually very strict about time-based and content-based access to foods.
I guess in the literal sense she advocates ‘eating whatever you like’, but the modified definition of ‘like’ that Ellyn Satter uses is not what I’d consider unrestrained.
Also I should note that it is a much better cite.
Satter and TFN both have beliefs about what people want (after adjustment periods or habit formations periods designed to clear away disorded eating patterns etc.). That doesn’t mean that they don’t really hold the belief that people (adults) should eat whatever they want, as much as they want. If I tell a houseguest they can eat anything they want in the kitchen, I really mean that when I say it, even if I am later shocked to find them eating glass bowls or something and say “I didn’t mean anything in the kitchen.”
Perhaps I can clarify my objections exploding ‘want’ into want/like/approve.
To me it feels like Ellyn Satter takes ‘-want/-like/+approves’ food behaviors then transforms the ‘-like’ and ‘-want’ variables into ‘+like’ and ‘+want’.
Comparatively, I feel like TFN takes ‘+want/+like/-approves’ food behaviors then transforms the ‘-approves’ variable into ‘+approves’.
Ellyn Satter’s stuff is all about behavior and desire modification, but everything I’ve read of TFN emphasizes approval more. In both cases you end up with ‘+want/+like/+approves’, which is a better result psychologically. But TFN just gets that, while Satter’s approach gets that and a better result physically as well. I think TFN would disagree of the original quote, while Satter would agree with caveats.
I’ve skimmed the linked site. It seems to describe a way to modify eating behavior resulting in people both eating healthily and being happy about it, rather than repressing their desires for food, obsessing over diets, and suffering psychologically.
I’m not an expert on the subject; I don’t know what different methods exist to achieve this kind of result and what is each method’s rate of success.
My original statement that “there is no disagreement” was wrong, I should have qualified it. Some people remain healthy all their lives while just eating whatever they like. Others may be able to achieve such a state through some behavioral modification technique. Still others may remain unhappy with healthy diets. For some there may not be a healthy diet at all: for instance people suffering from obesity, which may be associated with “bad” diet, but which in some cases no dietary changes can effectively fix.
The correct statement should be that the diets formed by just eating whatever we like are often harmful, and in some of these cases no healthy diet can be found that the person likes and can adhere to without any effort.
There are fat (obese) healthy people. There’s evidence that exercise is a better correlation for health than BMI or fat %.
A follow-up question would be whether exercise screens off being obese, i.e. whether going from obese to thin tends to make you healthier even if you’re already exercising. My guess is yes.
My guess is no, especially if you figure in the risk of getting an eating disorder—as far as I can tell, dieting is a gateway behavior for getting eating disorders.The risk isn’t terribly high, but the health effects of eating disorders are very negative.
In any case, rather few people achieve a substantial stable weight loss, so it’s hard to tell.